Kvapil Looking to Set Tone for Final Stretch

With the final off week of the 2012 Sprint Cup season in the rearview mirror, it's full speed ahead for Travis Kvapil, driver of the No. 93 Burger King/Dr Pepper Toyota. Kvapil and his BK Racing crew have their eyes set on this week's Curtiss Shaver 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, one of the most prestigious and coveted events in motorsports, and they're looking to start the final stretch off with a bang.

This will be BK racing's first time racing at the Brickyard. The team understands that all 43 teams in the garage will pull out all the stops to win and Kvapil sees this as an opportunity to make a statement. He hopes their performance reflects their capabilities and progress since forming in February.

Kvapil has competed at the Brickyard on four occasions. Half of his starts have resulted in top-25 finishes. His best finish (24th place) came in 2010.

"Obviously it's a great race track with a great history. I remember growing up and watching the Indy 500 and being a fan of Rick Mears and Danny Sullivan and other guys I looked up to. I didn't really get into the open wheel stuff, but I always watched the Indy 500 in May. Being on the stock car side, I never really thought I'd have the chance to make laps around there, so it's pretty cool to be able to race there with the Sprint Cup Series and make laps around the same place that my heroes did.

"This is a great chance for us to make a statement. This is one of the biggest races of the year. For us to go to Indy as a new team and leave with a solid finish, it will show everyone what we're capable of. We've come a long way and I hope this week reflects that.

"It's definitely a unique race track. It's very challenging. It's kind of a rectangular-shaped track with four corners and it's pretty flat. It's a challenge for the teams to get the splitter down as low as they can. On the engine side, it takes a lot of horsepower to get the cars down the long straightaways. You definitely have to have the total package there. It's going to be nice going there after a weekend off. Teams will be prepared. It's just a cool place to go.

"The Brickyard is pretty unique. There aren't many tracks with the characteristics of Indy. Pocono is similar, but only Turn 2. We feel like we learned a lot at Pocono during the open test and during the race weekend. It gave us an opportunity to try some things and get data on the car, which is good moving forward because we can take some things that we learned there and apply it to Indianapolis. We'll probably run a very similar setup even though the tracks are different."